


Lament

by grayimperia



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Background Relationships, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Multi, Referenced/implied Dimitri/Byleth and Claude/Byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-19 09:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22008655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayimperia/pseuds/grayimperia
Summary: Game Over.You have received an invitation to the goddess’s tea party. Accept?Or,After their deaths, Sothis reaches through time to invite each of the three who tried and failed to claim the crown of Fodlan to her tea party.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, Rhea & Sothis (Fire Emblem), Sothis (Fire Emblem) & Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Claude von Riegan & Edelgard von Hresvelg
Comments: 62
Kudos: 625





	1. The Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific tags: suicide/death idealization, minor animal death

It’s a void. Dimitri blinks his working eye, and he’s in a void. 

In the dead of winter, the nights in Faerghus were dark and Dimitri remembers being young and looking out a high castle window. All he could see were the tiny snowflakes flickering—given light be the torches from inside beyond their reach. If he looked down, he wouldn’t be able to see the blanket of snow below. Just more darkness, as if he and his father were tucked together in a tiny pocket of light to huddle under blankets and read stories before bed. 

There are no blankets, storybooks, or fathers here. But there is a table set for teatime and a young girl with green hair that reaches the floor sitting across from him. She seems bored as she observes him, one hand propping up her head. 

“Getting your bearings together can be difficult,” she says. “But I hope you will soon. I am called The Beginning and you are the one who clings to the past. I thought it would be good for us to speak first.”

Dimitri knows there is much he should question, but his slowly reeling mind manages to only latch on to her last word. “First?”

“Yes. I intend to speak to the three who sought after and failed to grasp the crown of Fodlan. I am the land’s mother after all, and I have so little to do now that I might as well check up on how it has and has not grown.”

The edges of the pieces in his head begin to come into sharper focus. He was fighting—charging across a field, his chest on fire with rage and actual flames. Someone lit the hill on fire. A soldier. A soldier working for…

“Edelgard.”

“She is one of the people I intend to speak with, yes,” the girl says. “Her and another boy, Clau—”

The girl continues to speak but Dimitri’s vision goes blurry around the edges. He can barely see anything as the same feeling that he knew was in his chest only moments ago floods him again. He’s on his feet, hands slamming down on the table as he looks around wildly into the void. “Where is she!?” he screams. “Where is Edelgard!? I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her!”

The girl doesn’t raise her head from her hand, only lifting her eyelids to stare up at him. “I see it is coming back to you then.”

Dimitri’s vision clears just enough to focus on her face, and it occurs to him that this girl must somehow be keeping him from Edelgard. “You—” and he lunges across the table, dishes and cups splattering to the ground as she stares at him, bored. “—you are hiding her—protecting her! I’ll kill her and I’ll kill you and everyone else who stands between me and her head on a spike!”

The girl’s lips twitch into a frown. “You’ve made a mess.”

She narrows her gaze just a fraction, and Dimitri feels his body move against his will. He struggles but he’s pulled backwards into his chair, and the dainty porcelain and finger sandwiches he sent to the floor flow back to their places, righting themselves on the table. He stares at the girl for one long second before going for her throat again.

She sighs as he’s frozen in place, jerking helplessly as he floats over the table. “I suppose if I introduce myself, you will cease your foolish violence—at least for the time being. As I said, I am Fodlan’s keeper—the progenitor god. They call me The Beginning, you who are bound by the past.” 

“Then, Beginning,” Dimitri snarls. “Release me from your prison.”

The Beginning waves her hand and he is once again pushed back into his chair. “This is no prison. You have left the mortal plane. Dead. I scoured time itself and chose a you that seemed representative of every you. And in most timelines, you die a violent man.” She sighs. “I suppose that means I brought this upon myself.”

“What… I—no! I have not had my vengeance. There is no time for death!” He pushes against his invisible restraints, and The Beginning does not bat an eye at his struggle. “Release me!”

“I can bend the flow of time,” The Beginning says. “But I cannot revive the dead if fate declares them doomed. You live in some timelines, but mostly you die in that field. I’d say that for every you that lives to take a step beyond that battle, another million perish there.”

“I—I cannot be dead! Edelgard—”

“Has died as well.” The Beginning frowns as she takes her focus off of him to nonchalantly swirl her tea. “She also usually dies young, even in timelines where she finds happiness. But I do not wish to speak with her right now. I have summoned you, young King of Faerghus.”

Dimitri feels his roaring heart slow. “Edelgard… she has died?”

“That is your concern? Oh well, I suppose it cannot be helped. But yes, if it will soothe you enough into drinking tea with me then I can inform you that she was stabbed through the heart some time after your passing. A vassal of yours even burned her corpse to cinders for good measure.”

Dimitri’s heartbeat hastens again at her words, but for the better this time. “Dedue…”

The Beginning shakes her head, and the gold bobbles in her hair sound like wind chimes as they brush against one another. “I found the whole matter quite horrid, but if that is what calms your heart, well. It proves that this will be an interesting conversation at the very least.”

Dimitri settles in his chair and he feels whatever was binding him dissolve. His tongue is heavy in his mouth, but it’s becoming workable in a way that can produce words rather than screams that make his throat raw. “Is… is that what you have called me here for, Beginning? A conversation?”

“Yes,” she says. “I find you curious. You tried to seize the crown of Fodlan, and your fate is intertwined with that of someone dear to me. When you claim your prize, you often claim her heart along with it.”

“I am uninterested in matchmaking if that is what you have called me for.”

“Oh, I do not seek to do any such thing as that. She will choose whoever she wishes. My advice can only lead that daft girl so far in the matters of love, especially when my voice cannot reach her.”

“I know little of love as well.” Dimitri’s expression tightens. He feels something rotten welling up in his throat, but it’s different than the hatred. “I am a beast. Love is beyond me.”

The Beginning’s boredom seems to crack with a quirked brow. “Is that so?”

Dimitri barely resists snarling as he gestures to himself. “Whoever your beloved is, would you wish her on a bloodthirsty creature?”

“No,” The Beginning says. “But she’s been known to make poor choices. And when she does choose you, you are eternally grateful that she does. She saves you from whatever ‘bloodthirsty creature’ lurks in your heart.”

“It does not ‘lurk within.’ It is me, and there is no man, woman, or child alive that could save me from this.” He turns his head, The Beginning’s eyes seeming to bore into him. “I am beyond redemption, and I would rather not waste someone else’s opportunity to claim it. Give your beloved to another.”

“Like I said, I do not give her to anyone. She is—”

“Unless she deserves damnation,” Dimitri snaps. “Then she should save herself the misery of my presence, let alone pouring her love into the pit where my heart once was.”

“Once was?”

Dimitri’s about to snap again before The Beginning waves a hand. “Now calm down, child. I only ask because I am curious. I can see all from the outside, but I cannot peer into the heads of humans. Well, all humans except for one.” She looks to the table and slides a platter over to him. “Cookie?”

The fire that had been building in him seems to extinguish all at once as he stares down the sugar cookie. “I… I have no sense of taste.”

“Oh, now that is a tragedy,” she says. “Well, let’s see. I suppose a cracker with a bit of cheese might be nice then. The textures could be pleasant, though I can only imagine what it is like to not be able to enjoy the sweetness of a cookie.” She smirks. “No wonder you are so angry.”

Dimitri frowns at her teasing. “Sweets cannot ease the horrors that I lived through.”

“Well, how would you know? You just admitted you cannot taste them.”

The Beginning takes her time preparing a plate of snacks before pushing it over towards Dimitri. He stares at it for one long moment. All the dishes and food are small so The Beginning’s child sized hands can manipulate them easily, and even with his earlier outburst still buzzing on his skin, Dimitri would feel foolish picking up the tiny cracker in front of him. “Is this all you wish to do? Prod and poke at me?”

“You speak as if this is torture, which makes it rather strange that you are tiring already. You have made it clear you wish for pain. Now then, there are others who have loved you, yes? When I spoke of your vassal, you seemed at peace, if only for a moment.”

“Yes,” Dimitri says, eyeing her suspiciously. He’s never been much for mind games or turns of phrase and he senses she’s trying to trick him. “Dedue has been with me for many years.”

“And is he wasting his time?”

“Yes,” Dimitri says with no hesitation. “His life would be better lived if he devoted himself to someone worthy of loyalty.”

“Then why did you not turn him away to serve some other lord?”

Dimitri does not have an answer. He remembers Dedue behind him on his charge across the field, trying to protect him from stray arrows and blasts of magic. He remembers Dedue quietly standing in the door to his room when he would go into a rage, smashing his own furniture and burying splinters by the dozens into his fists. And he remembers Dedue sitting with him without a word when his temper quelled, gently removing each and every splinter and bandaging his wounds without complaint. 

He looks to the plate stacked with cookies and crackers again. Dedue was an excellent cook, and when he learned of Dimitri’s condition, he endeavored to make something that he could enjoy regardless. 

He was here, dead, and Dedue was somewhere else. But Dedue wouldn’t go to hell, so Dimitri knew he had to accept life without him at some point.

The Beginning seems to take some joy in his lack of answer. “So the love this man ‘pours into the pit where your heart once was’ is meaningless because it cannot be returned?”

“It…” Dimitri clenches his fists. 

“You do not love—”

“Do not put words in my mouth, Beginning,” Dimitri says. “You know nothing.”

She laughs. “It seems you do not know yourself, either then.”

“I know myself too well. My love is a vile, wretched thing. I revoked my right to love when I slaughtered soldiers by the hundreds and bathed in their blood. How can my love be worth anything when I have rendered men and women limb from limb? Men and women with friends and families and children?”

“That is quite interesting.” The Beginning takes a sip from her cup.

“Interesting?” Dimitri scoffs. “You take interest in suffering?”

“I take interest in you, and you attempted to wring my neck when our visit prevented you from inflicting more suffering.”

“My quarrel with Edelgard is different.”

“And your love for that man, Dedue, is an exception.” The Beginning smiles. “You are quite the man of contradictions, aren’t you? Tell me, what is it like balancing so many paradoxes?”

Dimitri lowers his voice, but it carries just as much anger as it had when he was lunging across the table. “When you are haunted by the voices of the dead, you lead a life others cannot understand. No one can understand, let alone a child such as yourself.”

“I am no child. In fact, I have children a thousand times your age, young king. And I understand haunting and the dead better than you think as well,” The Beginning says. “I already told you—I am the keeper of a land I cannot touch.”

“That is not the same.”

“I haunted a child I could not touch. I watched her die and pick herself back up and die again more times than I could count in one timeline.”

“Your beloved daughter, who supposedly was saintly enough to love a monster like me.”

The Beginning shakes her head. “Oh, that ninny is not my daughter. And she did. She has been the beauty to your beast many times, and I fail to see what compelled her to stay at your side.”

Dimitri snorts. “I cannot give you answers. Most knights followed me because of their code of chivalry. It was their duty to the king, even if the king led them along a path of corpses.”

“Quite the dramatic fellow. Maybe that’s what kept her—the drama.” She pushes a cup towards him. “Now drink your tea. It is getting rather cold. Oh, and be sure to tell me if the man you could not push away stayed out of chivalry.”

Dimitri sweeps his arm out and smashes the cup to the ground. “You already know the answer to that, don’t you witch?”

“I am no witch.” The Beginning rolls her eyes. “I am The Beginning, and despite your rudeness, I wish to know of you. I wish to know your past.”

“My father was murdered,” Dimitri says. “That is my past.”

“And it is quite a sad one. You know, in a few timelines, there is a young girl whose brother was murdered. She usually tries to kill you in vengeance—she’s even succeeded a few times.”

If she meant to surprise him, she failed. Dimitri knew a fate like that could very well befall him at any time. All he wanted was to kill Edelgard first—appease the dead as best he could and then be killed to appease someone else’s dead. And when he died, he could either be at peace with the dead or be torn apart for failing them.

“That is the way of the world. The wheel of vengeance turns.”

The Beginning hums. “Is that why you try so hard to kill that girl?”

“Yes. I do what needs to be done to soothe the dead.”

“Some say that continuing the cycle is bad. Violence begets violence.”

“I do not care about cycles. I only care about what is in front of me.”

That earns him another laugh and Dimitri glares. “You truly are a man of simple goals,” she says. “Kill this woman and then be done with it. And what, pray tell, is your plan after beheading her?”

“I shall rid the world of her supporters, and all who had a hand in the murder of my family.”

“More violence, then?” She takes another long sip from his cup, and Dimitri feels the urge to upend the table. “I’ve seen your life, and so many yous before this point and those who make it past abhor this woman for violence. But that is all you seem to know.”

“When my father died,” Dimitri says. “And I found out his murderers were hiding in plain sight, my purposes narrowed. You cannot think of anything else when so many ask why you survived and why their killers still live.”

“And parading a woman’s head around on a pike brings peace? Brings your father back?”

“Do not mock me!”

The Beginning narrows her eyes. “I am asking a question.”

“It brings peace to them!”

“Who?”

“My father!”

“Your father wanted you to kill?”

“My father wanted to live!” 

Dimitri doesn’t know when he jumped to his feet, but he finds himself pacing, his hands clawing at his hair and face. “He wanted to live! He—there is something wrong with me! I am wrong—a beast, a boar!—and yet I live! Why should an animal live while the king dies!?”

The Beginning stands as well. “Calm down—”

“I should have slit my throat when I saw him die. I cannot be king. I cannot be king. I do not deserve a kingdom. I do not deserve this life. All I have done is—”

“I said—”

“Murder and torture and inflict the suffering my father—”

“To be calm!”

The Beginning holds out her hand and a wave passes over Dimitri. 

He blinks his one eye, and he is at Garreg Mach. But there are no fires or bandits or imperial troops. The Beginning is at his side, her hands on her hips. “You have forced me to abandon my tea. I hope you understand the gravitas of the situation.”

Dimitri feels the spiral slowly unwinding, but his bewilderment has the upper hand, especially when he sees himself. But this him is young and smiling and approaching the professor when her hair was still a deep blue. 

“What are you showing me?” he murmurs.

“A memory,” The Beginning says. “Not one of yours, but a different you. A you my ward chose and saved.”

Dimitri wanders closer, his legs barely holding him up as he passes his hand through the young him’s face. It goes right through, not even disrupting his words as he tells the professor that he is so glad to learn she does not take killing lightly. 

“The truth is,” the young him says. “I can never put it out of my mind. Even when we face bandits who have terrorized countless villages, I cannot help but wonder about their lives. Do they have families they are supporting? Perhaps some of them were unsure and ready to change their ways? I’m haunted by such thoughts, even when I know I am doing what must be done.”

The professor nods. “It is hard to believe another person deserves to die.”

“I don’t think I believe anyone deserves to die,” he says, then lets out a self deprecating laugh. “I know I must overcome this. A king most do what needs to be done, and if rebellion ever threatens Faerghus, I cannot hesitate.”

She tilts her head. “Is that what you want? To not hesitate?”

“Ah,” the young him seems at a loss for words, and Dimitri looks to The Beginning watching the professor with pride. 

“It isn’t?” she asks. “Then what do you want?”

“I want…” He pauses for a long time, and Dimitri is genuinely curious as to what his answer will be. All Dimitri’s wanted for a long time is Edelgard’s death. “I suppose I want things that are unattainable.”

“Everything you want?”

“Well, not _everything_ , but professor—”

“Then what is it you want?”

The young him looks at his feet and his words are so quiet, Dimitri barely hears them. “To be good.”

And the professor smiles. “I think you can do that.”

“It, ah, it has unfortunately been a lot harder than it sounds. Felix—”

She places a hand on his shoulder. “Be good.”

They seem to freeze, and Dimitri stares past them to The Beginning. She waves her hand again and they are back in the void.

“Professor Byleth,” Dimitri says. “She is your daughter?”

“She is not my daughter,” The Beginning says. “And that is hardly the point. Do you know what the point of that was?”

Dimitri isn’t sure. He hasn’t had a hand on his shoulder steadying him for quite some time now. Before The Beginning challenged him, he could scarcely recall anyone asking him to list his plans or desires. The entire memory seems so foreign, it is hard to believe that any version of him experienced it.

When he doesn’t have an answer, The Beginning sighs. “You are not beyond salvation. No child is born out of the crib ready to commit the murders you have. You could have veered from your path, even after your father’s death, The Past.”

Dimitri is still at a loss and he mumbles, “I hardly warrant such a title.”

“You are of the past,” The Beginning says. “And you remind me of someone who also dwells there… My daughter.”

“Professor Byleth?”

She huffs. “Byleth is not my daughter. I am referring to the daughter I gave birth to at the dawn of Fodlan’s creation. But that is hardly the topic at hand. I asked you for your goals after Edelgard’s death, and you had none because you are a creature of the past. There is no future for you, only the past and the cycle that perpetuates it.” She crosses her arms, and stares at the inky void that is the ground. “I do not understand you. Either of you.”

Dimitri decides not to ask who the other person is or how she relates to him. “I just want to do right by my father.”

“And you becoming a monster makes him happy?”

“No, but I am willing to become a monster if that is what it takes.”

The Beginning squeezes her eyes closed. “This woman—Edelgard—why do you fixate on her, then? She was a child in another country when your father was murdered.”

“She betrayed him,” Dimitri says. “She was his stepdaughter and now she is in league with his killers. She is a symbol of how all of Faerghus was betrayed.”

“She is not a symbol. She was a child.”

“It is all I can do!” Dimitri roars. 

“No, it is not!” The Beginning screams back. “You are a petulant, miserable, child! You are a man of children’s goals! Be good! Kill the bad guy! And instead you torture innocents fighting for their own survival and call it justice!”

“I never claimed it was justice!”

“Then what is it!?”

“It—” 

Dimitri’s head is spinning as The Beginning stares him down. The beast rages inside of him, but even it is confused of its target. The deaths of those who stand in his way are just the price that needs to be paid. The deaths are his way of honoring the dead. The deaths are so many things that all seem rotten in his mouth.

“It is all I can do…”

Dimitri’s father took him hunting once. He held his bow and arrow and shot where he was told. He laughed and skipped alongside his father, and mimicked his father in holding a finger to his lips when they had to be quiet before both giggled. 

He shot a bird resting on a branch. It fell to the ground, and his father told him he did a good job as he went to inspect it. The bow suddenly felt so much heavier in his hands, and it all clicked in Dimitri’s head that hunting and fighting meant killing. 

One of his father’s hunting assistance bagged it, and Dimitri didn’t realize he was shaking and crying until his father was kneeling in front of him. His father told him it was okay, and Dimitri sobbed. “W-What if it was building a nest? What if it had a family?”

His father held him close. “It is alright—do not think of those things. You only did what you could. There is no need to torment yourself over thoughts like that. You just did what seemed best, and there is no shame in that.”

Dimitri didn’t understand at the time and cried the entire way back to the castle. 

He doesn’t know when he got over it, and now he looks at The Beginning and her birdlike features, and says, “There is no shame in that… doing all that you can. There is no shame… I am just doing all I can.”

“All you can for what?”

He knows exactly, and the words somehow don’t sound real as he says them. “To make my father proud.”

The Beginning’s posture slackens, the fight draining from her as well. “And this is what makes your father proud?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why do you do it if you are so unsure?”

“Because,” and there’s a tightness behind his one working eye that hasn’t been there in so long. “Because what else is there to do? He has left me to figure it out, and I don’t know what to do.”

“You…” For the first time, The Beginning looks like the child she is. Her eyes are huge in her head and brim with tears she won’t let fall. 

Dimitri feels his legs give out from under him then, and he’s on his knees. “I don’t know anything. I do what I can, and pray I will be forgiven so I can one day be where my father is. The pain of separation is supposed to pass with time, but all its done is fester. I cannot go a day—an hour, even a second—without asking why he left me.”

The Beginning’s tiny hand is so light against his cheek. “I understand you, The Past,” she says. “You are so like my daughter. I do not know if your father was a good king and I do not know if I was a good god, but we both perished in a horrific tragedy and left our children behind. You are in so much pain, and when I listen to you, I fear for my daughter. She has felt your pain for over a thousand years.”

Dimitri closes his eye, and the tear slips free. He wants to nuzzle against her hand—allow the wild beast in his heart to be tamed by the goddess he always prayed would take mercy on him and let him be with his father.

But he does not deserve redemption. He knows that beyond any other truth. He could never respect a goddess who wouldn’t condemn him to hell.

“Your daughter,” he says, voice an aching echo of itself. “If she has endured what I have, has she become a monster, too?”

“She…” The Beginning retracts her hand and Dimitri fears he has misspoke until he sees her clutch her heart. “Even in timelines where she does not lose herself in revenge, she has already committed atrocities in my name. She longs for me and was so tortured by my death that even at her kindest and most pure, she can never truly forgive humanity, even if the souls living today bare no responsibilities for the sins that tormented her.” 

Dimitri thinks of himself and The Beginning taunting him that his mission to kill Edelgard was a fool’s errand. He knows deep down that she is right and that Edelgard was a child his own age when his father died. She is not responsible, and part of him has always known that. 

“My daughter has done it all for me, too. Her mother was murdered and her body was defiled. What child would want that to be how their parent was remembered? She has already avenged me, and when that did not bring me back, she set out to twist all of Fodlan in the hopes that I could be revived. Tell me,” The Beginning’s voice is barely above a whisper. “You, who thinks yourself a damned monster for the crimes you have committed—would you damn yourself further and pull Fodlan into darkness if it would bring your father back?”

Dimitri’s throat feels tight, and he wishes he could lie to not disappoint her. But he has never been one for deceit, and the time for lies has long since passed. “Yes.”

“What about… just the hope that he could come back and hold you in his arms again? Just hope?”

“Is that what your daughter did?”

“Since she realized that bones could not love her, yes. And you, creature of the past?”

Dimitri can’t look at her. A Dimitri that was full of hope enters his mind. If there had been a seed of hope in his mind that he could one day return home and his father would be there waiting for him, everything would have been different. Not just the big things—the war, the murder, the lust for revenge burrowed deep in his heart—but everything. A Dimitri with hope would not thrust his lance the same, would not talk the same, would not look the same, act the same, or even breathe the same. 

“Beginning, you already know the answer.”

“How,” she shakes her head and the tears fall freely. “How badly have I ruined her?”

Then it’s Dimitri’s turn to reach out to her, and her tiny shoulder is completely engulfed by his hand. “If she is like me, then… is it what you said before? We are not ruined, we just know no other way to live. I want to be good, and my heart can still love, but there is nowhere to go to but more suffering.”

The Beginning lets out one deep breath before she wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him down into a hug. 

“Your wounds, my daughter’s wounds,” she says into his ear, her voice shaky with the weight of a mother’s despair. “They have not healed. No matter how much time passes, they have not dulled. I wield time, and I always imagined that such hurt would remain a part of you, but time would make the pain pass. But instead it has rotted and poisoned the goodness until almost none remains untainted. 

That is what time has done. It has left you both behind.”

Something Dimitri didn’t even know was in him shatters, and he collapses even further on his knees until he is doubled over and burying his face in her lap. He cries. He cries for all the times he was deprived of crying to his father. He cries for himself, for his father, for Dedue, for all the people he’s killed, for Edelgard, and for The Beginning and her lost daughter.

She holds him like his mother never had the chance to. She places a hand on his head, and strokes his hair while time moves around them.

“May I sing you a song?” The Beginning asks, her voice choked with the tears she must have shed while Dimitri sobbed into her dress. “It is one I used to sing for my children. I remembered it before I remembered them. I am a terrible mother, but at least I have the song…”

Dimitri’s throat is too raw to speak, and he prays that she can see him nod his head. 

“I would sing it for the poor girl who was trapped being my vessel, too. All I can do is sing, and hope my voice reaches someone. I could not reach you when you were alive, wretched creature of the past. You prayed to me, and I could not even get out a whisper as you screamed for me,” she says, her voice slowly waning as she becomes overburdened by her own sadness. “You are a foolish, worthless king, and I am a foolish, worthless god.”

Then she clears her throat. “ _In time’s flow, see the glow of flames ever burning bright…_ ”

And Dimitri falls asleep, tucked into a small pocket of light with his mother’s hand in his hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a different take on Dimitri, mostly because I wanted to compare and study him and the other two lords against Sothis, and I ended up thinking it was interesting enough to write a fic about, haha. Next chapter will be Claude, and that one may or may not (but probably not) end in a hug from Mama Sothis...


	2. The Present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific warnings: some discussion of suicide

Claude’s last thought is _Well, that was stupid_. And then he’s at a table seated across from a tiny girl so decorated in gems and baubles, he’s surprised she doesn’t topple over from the weight. 

His head is cloudy, and she offers him tea he has no intention of drinking. But he makes a show of looking over everything and reorganizing the plates in front of him while he waits for his mind to clear. 

Claude swirls his spoon, letting its side clink against the porcelain walls of his cup. The girl’s lips twitching in disapproval at his manners only cause his grin to widen. He may still be waiting to see how this plays out, but the child before him reminds him of Lysithea—a young girl trying so hard to be an adult—that he can’t not tease her.

“So,” he says. “It’s rather rude to stare, don’t you think? How about a few introductions? My name is Conroy Feldman, I’m from a little town in the—”

“How curious,” the girl says. “I have never had anyone try to lie to me so blatantly before.”

Claude keeps his grin level. “Accusing someone of lying? That’s even ruder than staring.”

She sighs. “I am going to get nowhere with you unless I am direct. You are Claude von Riegan, and you led a place called the Leicester Alliance. You attempted and failed to rule all of Fodlan.”

“Whoa, who, slow down. I’ve only ever heard of this Claude character, you’re talking about. And he never attempted to rule anything besides the Alliance, and even that was touch and go.” He leans down, as if putting them on the same level would draw her to his side. “Seems like your information is a bit off. Mind telling me where you’re getting it from?”

“The sea of time. They call me The Beginning. I am the progenitor god of Fodlan, and lying to me is pointless, Claude von Riegan.”

Claude looks her up and down. “You seem a little young to be the goddess.”

“And you seem a little young to die, but here we are.”

Claude frowns. He had a feeling, but he was hoping he was wrong. He was in Derdriu, and the empire was coming. Hilda was doing her best to guard the bridge, but he heard her scream. He remembered seeing the soldiers close in on him like hunters cornering their prey, and he kicked off on his wyvern to fly… and he heard the sounds of bows letting their arrows free. And then he awoke here.

He looks over to the girl claiming to be the goddess and takes her in again. She certainly isn’t human from her sharp ears and hair that seems to glow. Her robes are strange and she’s so decorated in jewelry that at first glance she looks like a child playing dress up. But her appearance is too similar to a few faces he had long since suspected were not human, and the fact that she summoned him to a void in time itself cannot so easily be dismissed. 

The other possibility is he’s hallucinating, and there’s nothing wrong with playing along with a few delusions that will never make it out of his head and across enemy lines to spread his secrets. 

“Well, what can I tell you,” he says, without missing a beat in the conversation. “War’s hell. Speaking of which, am I headed there? I figure that you’re not supposed to insult the goddess in your judgment meeting and I’ve already shot that horse in the face.”

“This is not a judgment, though if it were, trust me, you would have already failed,” the goddess says. “It is merely a conversation. Despite your claims to the contrary, you strove to claim the crown of Fodlan and lost. As the goddess of Fodlan, I thought a discussion with you might be… let’s say enlightening.”

Claude leans back in his chair. “Huh.”

“That is a rather… dulled reaction.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m just trying to figure something out.”

“Then share it by all means. I may have control over time, but I still hate to be kept waiting.”

“Oh, it’s a small problem. Really nothing you should worry your pretty little head over.”

The goddess scowls like Lysithea when Claude accuses her of stealing an extra cookie at dinner. “Out with it, child.”

“Ooh testy. I guess the goddess of Fodlan really is all fire and brimstone with a tone like that.”

“You should no I have little patience for guessing games and even littler for those who mock me.”

“I’m not mocking. Just thinking. I’d have figured I’d have a different goddess calling upon me when my time came.” He smirks. “Guess the divine just can’t get enough of me if you came a-knocking, too.”

Her pout fades. “Ah, I see now. You don’t believe in me, do you? Well, I can assure you whether or not you are a follower of Seiros that I very much do exist. Seiros did as well, and the other saints in addition to—”

“Sounds great, but listen, goddess,” Claude says. “Back when I was alive, the two of us never saw eye-to-eye. So I just don’t think we have much to say to each other. So send me on my way—damn me to eternal torture or the void or whatever else it is you do with heathens and we can both get on with our lives. Or well, I can get on with my death. Actually, aren’t you supposed to be dead, too?” He raises a cup. “Well then, to our mutual death.”

“You are rather cavalier about all this.”

“Would you prefer I act differently?”

“I prefer honesty, and very few humans can honestly say they have no strong feelings about their deaths.”

“Then I guess I continue to be one in a million.”

In truth, Claude can’t help but feel a bit ashamed over how he went out. Raphael, Ignatz, Leonie, and even poor Lysithea had all died in his name at Gronder. They weren’t even killed by the empire either. Dimitri’s commanded his soldiers to attack anyone who moved and any control over the battle was ash in his hands.

And then there was Hilda who escaped with him and died screaming when their enemies came. Hilda, who had sat with him after curfew in the dining hall to swipe tomorrow’s dessert from the kitchens, vowed that she would never give her life for another person. 

“I’ll do what I can to protect someone,” she had said. “But when you die—well, that’s it, you know? What’s the point in giving your life? It’s all just over.”

Claude had agreed and then he had wondered if Marianne’s death changed her. Marianne went back to her father’s estate and then they never heard from her until it was announced she passed on. If she had died peacefully or in her sleep, they would have said as much, but there was nothing. 

No one had to say anything about what happened, and Claude had attended her funeral on that bright sunny day, sweating through his mourning suit as he gave a speech that she was a fine young woman who the goddess was sure to take mercy on. 

Claude didn’t expect anything from the goddess, and he didn’t pray for her or call out for her once as the soldiers neared to shoot him down.

“By the way,” he says. “I had a friend, once, who really believed in you. She prayed for hours everyday, but she’d never tell me what she was asking you for. Drove me up a wall, but she said it was for your pointed ears alone.”

The goddess hums. “I think I have seen her in a few timelines. Marianne, was it? She often dies young, too…” she trails off and her face tenses.

“That expression tells me you know how she usually dies, then.”

“I have few words when I see tragedy such as that. She told someone dear to me, too, that she had spent years praying for such an end. I,” she frowns at her tiny fists balled up in the tablecloth in front of her. “I hardly know what to say.”

Claude doesn’t quite know how to process the information either. He had had a suspicion but had always dismissed it. He had long since learned to consider his enemies were plotting the worst, most insidious acts they could, but there were some possibilities that were even too dark for his mind to linger on for long. 

“She prayed for her own death,” he says. “If only she had said something back then. I spent so long bothering her to get her to confess until she snapped at me. I figured Marianne yelling was a sign from the universe to back off.”

The goddess eyes him.

“Maybe you should go pay a visit to Marianne,” Claude says. “I’m sure she’d be thrilled to get an invitation to whatever this is.”

“You hate secrets, don’t you?”

Claude keeps his smile. “No? Secrets are kind of my thing. I pride myself on being a man of mystery. A man so mysterious even the goddess herself is left to puzzle out my existence.”

“You are exhausting, too,” she sighs as if thoroughly exhausted herself. “You obscure your meaning by running in circles and performing tricks with your words. Each sentence is a slight of hand and you just hope your audience will stop following your tricks with enough time.”

“But I won’t fool you because you’re made of time, oh goddess of Fodlan. By the way, just what are your abilities? I was never quite clear on what you actually did besides, you know, die.”

“And you also seek to irritate to drive others away.” She presses both of her tiny hands to her forehead. “My girl was so slowwitted. I adored her, truly, but she was never one for untangling threads. What could possibly draw her to someone like you?”

Claude feels his curiosity peek over the identity of the goddess’s girl, but at the same time, he can’t let a chance for freedom slip through his fingers. 

“Looks like it’s time for the goddess to have her nap. Whether you’re a child or an old lady, naptime is important, yeah? Keeps you from being a cranky, vengeful god. I’ll just be on my way then to give you some peace and quiet.”

The goddess scowls. “You are such a rude man, and this conversation ends when I declare it over.”

“So I am being held prisoner?”

“Think of it that way if you will.”

“Ooh, that sounds bad for me. Back at the academy most prisoners would face the goddess’s judgment. Course, that was just a euphemism for getting their heads chopped off by the archbishop’s goons.”

The goddess’s express twitches, and Claude recognizes he touched on something that goes deeper than surface irritation. “Yes,” she says. “I am aware of that practice.”

“So did you invite all of those people for a little spot of tea before their untimely ends?”

“I do not control what the church does,” she says, voice tight. “I am Fodlan’s creator and keeper, but I cannot interact with the world of man.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” she tears her eyes away from him. “Because I am dead.”

Claude lifts his cup of tea he still hasn’t taken a sip from. “Here’s to being dead.”

The goddess glares at him again, and Claude smiles because he somehow feels less fear when under the ireful gaze of an actual god than Seteth. Of course, Seteth could banish him to the library or cathedral for cleaning duty. 

“You know,” she says, “it was actually a challenge to find a you who died during the war. You only die when your plans for escape go wrong. And you always die fleeing from your enemies.”

Claude considers her words carefully. She very well could be lying to unsettle him, but he is curious about the supposed fate of other Claudes as well as why the goddess would try to purposefully find one who did not survive the war. 

“What can I say? We Claudes are an eclectic group. No two Claudes the same.”

She elects to ignore him, which is just as well. “Most yous run with their tail between their legs to Almyra. And then sometimes there is conflict or an uprising in Almyra—you’re declared to have too much blood from Fodlan or to not possess the true strength needed for a king—and then you run again. I’ve followed yous who run and run. One ran all the way to the land on the other side of Almyra and joined a circus. Now that was a one in a million version of you.”

Claude isn’t sure what to do with the information he had spent more than a few seconds debating the best way to wrangle it out of her. “Like I said, us Claudes lead exciting lives.”

“You certainly lead long lives.”

“Is that a bad thing? Didn’t you mock me earlier for dying young?”

“It’s just funny. You, so desperate for change and with such grand ambitions… in the end you don’t actually care for your ideals that much. And you trumpeted them so grandly to my ward that she would follow you to the ends of the earth whenever she stood at your side. You,” she says raising an accusing finger, “are an excellent con man.”

Claude feels a flash of anger. Still, he keeps his voice even. “Hey now, schemes and cons are two different creatures. I dabble in trickery, but not out of greed.”

“No,” the goddess says. “I think your trickery goes deeper than you assume it does. Once you have a taste of power, you convince yourself your ideals are imbedded on your very skin—they are the reason you were born into this world. But once the flow of power ebbs away from you, you convince yourself it was always a pipedream, and one you were never truly invested in at that.”

Claude knows he should hold his tongue. 

He had long since learned the only way to get what you want was to never let anyone know what you wanted. If you enemies didn’t know your motive, they could not guess your actions, and they could not stop you. He also knew, as a child, that if you never told anyone your hopes or dreams, they could never laugh at you or mock you for them. 

The truth was not a neutral concept. It had power, and he’d be damned if he voluntarily let someone he didn’t trust have power over him. 

But, then again, he also had a bit of a streak of mouthing off to authority. And what greater authority was there than a goddess?

“You’re making quite a few assumptions,” he says, still weighing his words.

“Not assumptions. Just educated observations from what I have observed of you. I have access to the life of every version of you in existence. I think after watching you stumble and fall and grow old and bear children and die alone in the streets and make friends and betray friends and become a street performer that I know you rather well.”

“You know the general idea of me. But no two Claudes are the same.”

She smiles, and Claude schools his expression to hide any irritation that may have poked through. “No, I think you are all exactly the same. There is one timeline I am particularly fond of where someone dear to me weds you. She has children and the two of you live happy lives together.”

“Listen, goddess, I know I’m handsome, but I’m a little too dead to marry your daughter.”

“She is not my daughter,” the goddess says. “And I have seen that same timeline go wrong. You grow paranoid over her intentions when she makes decisions and reaches out to old enemies without consulting you. Or her heritage becomes too dense of a mystery for you to unravel and you grow less and less comfortable allowing it into your bed. Or you notice she doesn’t age while you grow into an old man, and you realize you are handing the peace you weaseled your way into over to someone who will live just as long as the previous ruler you despised.”

“Well, at least that solves the mystery of why you hate me. I betray your daughter sometimes, is that right?”

“I said, she is not my daughter,” the goddess snaps. “And the point is that you are like wind. You change and come and go when it suits you, and you always tell those you want to trick into trusting you that you will be there forever before you are gone the next day. I have even seen you do such a thing to your wife when she is heavy with child.”

Claude sees the trick at the last second before he responds. “Goddess,” he says. “You’re trying to bait me, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re telling lies—”

“I detest lies.”

“—cherry picking the worst, then, and rubbing it in my face to provoke me.”

“We are having tea like civil adults. Why would I want to provoke you?”

“Because no levelheaded player would voluntarily reveal their hand. So you get them to not be so levelheaded anymore, and soon they spill all their secrets.”

“I am hardly interested in secrets.”

“Everyone’s interested in secrets.”

“And why is that?”

“Because secrets make the world go round, secrets are powers, and secrets are why even goddesses like you try to bait mortals like me.”

She frowns. “You must think the worst of me if you believe those are my true intentions. I am not after power or control, and I have no desire to control you.”

Claude laughs. “I thought you said you hated lies? Everyone wants control.”

“I said I don’t want to control you.”

“Everyone wants to control the people around them. Our lives would be that breezy wind you mentioned if everyone around us acted as expected and did what we wanted.”

“And secrets control people?” she scoffs. “That is still nonsense. As the goddess, I was open with people—trusted them absolutely even—and I possessed absolute control over the land.”

Claude clicks his tongue. “And that trust in your people likely you got murdered. And yet you mock me for fleeing when I see my murder on the horizon.”

“I had more to think of than just myself,” she says. Then she pauses and takes a sip from her cup. Claude steels himself for whatever must be coming next. “There’s a girl I see quite a bit before you flee. Sometimes she runs, too, but usually she doesn’t make it and you leave without her.”

“I cannot carry a corpse with me,” Claude says. “And it’s good to hear Hilda lives sometimes. I always told her to cut and run when things got bad.”

“You’d accept her abandoning you?”

“It’s not ‘abandonment’ when the other person doesn’t owe you anything. We were two people with similar goals, and we both agreed that if things got bad, we’d take care of ourselves.”

The goddess hums. “Like common mercenaries.”

“If that description suits you, sure.”

“But does it suit you?”

“This isn’t about me.”

She rests her chin on her hand. “You’re right. Very little is about you. But the deaths of those around you are about you—not even you, snake that you are, can avoid that truth. Tell me, did you ever share your secrets—your power—with those who’d fight to the death for you?”

Claude did not. 

The goddess doesn’t give him a chance to answer. “Did you ever become frustrated with the others, like you did that Marianne girl, that they did not tell you their secrets?”

Claude takes a second to consider his options before running a hand through his hair. “Hey, goddess, do you want to know a secret about secrets? There is no such thing as a good secret.”

Her brow furrows under her heavy headdress. “Really? You seem to indulge in them, so is this you admitting your own moral bankruptcy?”

“You’re not following,” he says with a smirk. “Think of it this way—why does a person keep a secret? Because they have something to hide, yeah? And now why does a person hide something from those around them?”

“I assume there are as many reasons as there are people.”

“People are simpler than you think, goddess. People keep secrets to spare feelings, to launch surprise attacks, to lure others into a sense of security. Secrets are power because secrets always cause harm when they are revealed. And sometimes just the secret that you have no secrets is enough to give you power, even if the person hurt when the truth comes is yourself.” He taps his cup with a spoon, sending a clicking noise echoing through the void. “Do you get it now, oh progenitor god?”

She pauses for another moment. Then, “I think I do, yes. You have been robbed of your ability to trust, and it only returns to you sometimes after years of devotion. And even then it can shatter again.”

“Trust is earned,” Claude says. “I trusted the people who fought under me, yeah. I didn’t trust them with everything because revealing certain secrets would just cause harm, like I said before. But I trusted them to do what needed to be done and they trusted me. And that’s all you really need in life.”

“Did they trust in the ideals you were fighting for?”

They had no idea. Hilda died fighting—giving him a chance to flee—and she had no clue what he really wanted. Lorenz defended him from his father for as long as he could before being forced out of Claude’s army, and he never had more than scraps he hunted down himself. Marianne took her life without the slimmest idea that maybe if she followed him, the future wouldn’t be the bleak one she was so convinced would come to fruition.

Claude never said a word to any of them, and he knew exactly why that was so. The harm would come, and it would land on his head, and then he would run again before the war even started. 

“They trusted in me,” he says. “They didn’t need to know the details to know I was doing what was in their best interest. They had faith.”

“Would you follow a leader whose plan is just ‘trust me?’”

“No.” He smirks. “But I’ve always been smarter than the average soldier, and like you said, my trust is broken.”

“You say that with such finality, but I’ve seen it mended before. My ward managed to provoke your true dreams from you with just a few words and her steadfast presence.”

Claude can’t help but laugh. “I’m going to assume you’re looking at your precious ward through some rose colored glasses, then. You know, we can never truly know the past because we always project our present selves onto it. Your ward was probably being lied to, given that I’m—what did you call me?—oh, right, a snake.”

“She wasn’t,” the goddess says. “But you bring up a good point. The present.”

“Always a gift.”

“You forsake your past to secrecy and are ready to abandon the future you dream of in a moment’s notice. You live to survive the present.”

He rests an elbow on the table, leaning forward to remind himself just how small the goddess speaking down to him is. “You can’t make it to the future if you’re dead, goddess.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m already barely tolerating your existence, especially given that you’re a figment of my imagination, but I don’t think I can hear another word if you’re going to disparage someone for wanting to live.” And then, because some small part of him can’t help but feel vengeful. “If you lived and ruled instead of your deranged daughter, there may not have even been a war.”

The goddess scowls as she draws to her feet. “My daughter may be a monster, but I will not tolerate such words against her. She has lived through more pain than you can dream of.”

“She ignores the present,” Claude says, the words coming fast once he taps into every bitter thought he ever drummed up against Rhea. “She’s fueled by the past and she clings to a future that will never be, and in the meantime, the present rots around her until all of Fodlan is drenched in blood. In some ways, I don’t even blame Edelgard—she’s a monster, too, but I can see why she snapped.”

“My daughter—”

“Has been through so much. I’m sure.” He leans back in his chair. “I’ve been through quite a bit, too. You think a person becomes a snake who can’t trust even the people who would die for him without going through something truly awful? But I just choose to survive rather than imposing my will on others. Anyone could be like Rhea, but so few are.”

The goddess is shaking in anger, and Claude is absolutely sure she’s going to slap him before she waves a hand.

They are somewhere else. Claude looks around, taking in the strange building that he can tell is from a different time despite its immaculate upkeep. The goddess directs his attention as she walks forward to stand in front of a box in the ground. Claude follows and peers in over her tiny head to see an older version of the goddess peacefully asleep.

“Where have you taken us?” 

“To my death,” she says, eyes locked on her own sleeping face. “I used my power to aid my children and give them as peaceful and happy a life as I could. And then I laid my head down to rest here. Listen.”

She closes her eyes, and Claude strains his ears. In the background he can begin to hear the rage of battle. People—men, women, and even children—are all screaming. 

The goddess looks truly miserable, her face stony and her tiny hands clenched into fists. “Those your children out there?”

“Yes.”

“Are they beginning massacred?”

“Yes. And I slept through it.”

Claude only has a moment to process that and the profound sadness in her voice before the doors to the room burst open. A monster of a man stomps forward, and walks right through the goddess’s ghostly image to leer at the sleeping form in the box.

“You may want to look away,” the goddess whispers, and then it happens.

The man wastes no time. The goddess is murdered in her sleep while her children scream in despair outside. Then the man performs the kind of horrors that Claude never even entertained his enemies could be planning. 

“My body was harvested,” the goddess says beside him, “and turned into a weapon that he would then use to kill more of my children. And then their bodies would be harvested and turned into weapons until nearly all of us were dead.”

Claude squeezes his eyes closed, willing the gory sight before him to vanish. “Okay, I got it. What was the point of showing me this?”

“You need to understand that there are some ideals you cannot run from. My daughter didn’t have the luxury to turn her back and run from this horror. Not everyone can leverage secrets and find hidden escape routes. Some of us are chained to our presents, and we cannot survive them by casting off the past or the future.”

The man finally walks away, seemingly satisfied with the mess of bone and blood in his hands. 

“So you’re trying to scare me straight, yeah?” Claude says. “Then, fine, I get it. Your daughter had her reasons when this happened. But what are her reasons for looking down on people like me?”

“She looks down on all humans because of this.”

“Maybe, but she spits on foreigners.” He shakes his head. “You haven’t changed my mind. Yes, some people have no choice but to stand and fight, but they don’t have a right to take their misery out on people who aren’t involved. This is a tragedy, but it is not an excuse.”

The goddess doesn’t argue. She waves her hand and returns them to the tea table. 

The goddess looks thoroughly miserable as she stares into her cup. Claude looks at her, waiting for her to speak, but she does not. 

“Well?” he prompts.

She is quiet. Then, “you may go, The Present.”

“You’re giving me a title?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The goddess shrugs. “I did for the last man I called. He sought to rule Fodlan and he clung to the past. You seek to rule Fodlan, and you live for the present.”

“Dimitri,” Claude says. “How is he?”

“Dead.”

“Aren’t we all?”

The goddess sighs, and from her expression, Claude knows he has worn out his welcome. “He is like my daughter,” she says. “He is a kind soul, but he has committed horrors that cannot be forgiven. There are realities where he overcomes the anguish in his soul and leads the world to peace. There are others where he rips you off of your wyvern and punches a hole straight through your chest for no discernable reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Claude winces. “Yeah, that sounds like Dimitri.”

“He barely wished to rule, either. He is also like my daughter in that way. Both found themselves on the path and knew they could not let the people around them down. Their followers had faith in them and they respected that, even if they both knew they were truly broken individuals and neither had much clue how to rule.”

“If they knew that about themselves,” Claude says. “Then they would do better by their supporters to pass the crown to someone who could provide for them and do what’s right.”

The goddess sighs. “Perhaps you are right. Could you do what is right for your supporters if you had the power? If you had all the secrets in the world?”

“That’s what I said before—everyone wants control and the world would be an easier place if we could control everyone around us.”

“But what would you use that control for?”

And Claude realizes that through their entire chat, he never mentioned what his ideals are. They lie so close to his chest that even speaking them allowed feels like removing a piece of armor. 

“I’d make a better world,” he says. “A world where people don’t judge each other based on what they look like or where they are from. People are taken as they are.”

“No one can be taken as they are,” the goddess says. “We all carry secrets, do we not?”

“Yes, and in my world people respect each other’s secrets and each other’s differences. We wouldn’t have to worry if the person beside us will betray us in the future because of their differences. We could just enjoy the present we are given.”

The goddess yawns, but her despair seems to be fading. “That sounds nice.”

Claude reaches forward and finally takes a sip from his tea. “And we could a feast like this one.”

The goddess frowns. “You are trying to win me over. I warn you, it will not work.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I know when to accept a loss and move on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always thought Claude is an interesting character, though I don't see his flaws explored very often. And as someone who loves flawed characters, I always somehow end up taking a deep dive with, haha. Anyway hope you enjoyed!


	3. The Future

“It was hard to find a you who would speak to me,” the girl says. “I summoned many different ones, and they just refused to say a word.”

Edelgard takes a sip from her tea. It’s familiar, and she recalls Ferdinand spreading his collection before her in the imperial palace’s dining room and insisting he would find the perfect blend for her wedding. As the minister of the imperial household, all party planning technically fell under Hubert’s jurisdiction, but she could see how much choosing between color palettes grated on him so both had acquiesced in allowing Ferdinand as much control as he desired. She and her wife were both rather indifferent to the details anyway—as long as they were to be married, Edelgard was happy.

Still, Ferdinand must have made her drink a thousand cups of tea in the months prior, and the experience seems to finally have a second use. 

“This is a special blend named after my family, isn’t it?” Edelgard asks. “Bribery?”

“Normally I am beyond such things, but in your case I figured stacking the deck in my favor was only appropriate.” She sighs. “After being brushed off a few hundred times, any soul would see the merit in changing strategies.”

“There is no need. I am at grater peace with myself than I was during the war. And I am at peace with you…?”

She trails off, looking to the girl expectantly. The girl sits up straighter. “They call me The Beginning. I am the progenitor god of Fodlan.”

“And your name is?”

“I am the goddess.”

“And do goddesses not possess names?”

“It is seen as a sign of respect to address one by their title. As an emperor during your life, you surely know the weight of names and titles. To speak on that basis would imply we are of equal station.”

“I am aware,” Edelgard says. “So what is your name?”

The girl stares her down for another long moment, and Edelgard begins to suspect she isn’t going to respond until her lips quirk into a smile. “Sothis.”

“I thought as much, but it is still polite to have introductions.” Edelgard holds her hand across the table. “I am Edelgard von Hresvelg, former emperor of Adrestia and united Fodlan.”

Sothis accepts the handshake. “Sothis, keeper and creator of Fodlan.”

“Charmed.”

“As you should be.”

They stare at each other—Sothis evaluating, Edelgard passive. 

“I feel I should clear the air,” Edelgard says. “My problem has never been with you, specifically. In fact, if anything, you have done many great personal favors for me. And even more than that, you saved the life of someone very dear to me when my actions put them in danger.”

Sothis waves her hand. “Oh, don’t trouble yourself over that. My fate and consciousness was tied to hers. Getting us out of that void was as much for me as it was for her.”

“She told me you lost your ability to speak to her after that. You sacrificed what little independence you did have, and I am not innocent in that coming to pass.” 

Edelgard takes another sip from her cup. In the days before the end neared, her hands would shake—her blood finally rebelling. The tremors no longer plagued her in this strange afterlife, but she still felt the phantoms of them. In her efforts to hide from Hubert’s keen eye, she had made an effort to be as precise with her movements as possible and the habit had yet to wear off. The tea before her is both an excellent way to collect herself and lose her train of thought when her movements don’t quite pan out as expected. 

If Sothis notices, she doesn’t say a word. “From my understanding of Fodlan’s shaping, you are innocent in very few things.”

“Your understanding is correct.”

“Huh. I cannot say I was expecting such an easy confession, especially given the stony reception I received from the other yous.”

“I cannot speak for them entirely as they had different experiences, but I doubt there is a me that would abandon all blame. And that is not the issue at hand.”

Sothis tilts her heavily decorated head. “Is it not? When I spoke to the two others who attempted to claim Fodlan’s crown, responsibility and choice seemed to be _the_ issue.” 

“Claude and Dimitri…” The names sound so distant to her. It has been just over ten years since they had any bearing on her life. “They… I think I’d hardly say they tried to seize power.”

“They waged an offensive war when the time suited them,” Sothis says. “Your actions simply made it possible for them to act on other budding ambitions. Once the path was cleared, they gave their all to sit upon the throne.”

“I suppose I only know Claude and Dimitri from one lifetime, but it is still as you say. ‘Once the path was cleared.’ I had to clear the path—break the seal of peace—for them to act. If I hadn’t, they would have ruled their territories as destiny prescribed and any further dreams would remain dreams.” Edelgard looks up from her tea. “Of course, if I am wrong, I invite you to say so.”

“No, your assumptions are correct. The catalyst is always you. It is almost strange saying those words now, though,” Sothis smiles. “You are not the same spitfire I’ve seen charging across battlefields and pronouncing me dead.”

“I’ve aged.”

“And only an aged you would speak to me, even if you say your problems don’t truly lie with me.”

“Age tempers emotion.”

Sothis waves a hand. “And yet you are still a child to me. You die young so often, even when you do manage to grasp your perfect ending.”

Edelgard’s hand tightens and she swears she feels the tremors starting up again. “You know the cause for my death. Your blessings are actually curses, and eventually the poison takes the host. First, their body betrays in little ways, then the mind goes, and finally, the host is a husk of themselves.”

Sothis doesn’t have a clever remark for that. “You saw someone dear to you go through that ordeal. Not just in the distant past, but… that girl almost as small as you—Lysithea, was it?”

Edelgard manages to nod and drinks from her tea. Lysithea’s death was a deep wound over her heart that nothing could heal until her own death. She thought she had finally recovered from the memory of her siblings, too, but then seeing her new sister writhe in pain as her eyes grew duller and duller awakened everything she had done so much work to bury. 

“Yes,” she says, doing her best to keep her voice even. “I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. Why it’s enough to,” and she forces herself to laugh, “to make anyone burn down Fodlan and try to start anew. Once your eyes are opened to pain like that existing in the world, you cannot continue living passively.”

“After watching you, I find it hard to believe you could breathe passively.”

“I will take that as a compliment. Like I said, I see no reason to deny my role in breaking Fodlan’s stasis.”

“Some would call it kicking the hornet’s nest.”

“Some would.” She eyes Sothis over her teacup. “Are you among them?”

“It is difficult to say.” Sothis twists her own cup in her hands, as if examining the pattern. “In truth, I think I make an effort to be kinder to you because you are the easiest to hate. I have to work harder to see what other side lies beneath the surface.”

Edelgards nods. For as civil as their conversation is, she knows there are a few inescapable truths that will always put them at odds. Edelgard murdered her daughter, and Sothis’s legacy nearly murdered Fodlan. 

“Is my surface too marred with blood for your liking?”

“Yes, and I find it distasteful that you parade around as if you were a savior instead of a conqueror. More tea?”

“Yes, thank you.”

They perform the mundane actions as if they really were two people making idle conversation in a rose garden. 

“For the record,” Edelgard says. “Fodlan is better now. There is no nobility—no system of birth and blood to determine merit. When I passed, most of our efforts were still in their infancies, but they showed great promise and I now those I promoted to overseer positions will do all that they can.”

“And they will find success. It will be quite confusing for the people a hundred years from now when they try to navigate the city. Everything is to be named after you, and one can only be told to go past the Edelgard von Hresvelg memorial building so many times before becoming hopelessly lost.”

Edelgard smiles into her tea. “That sounds too sentimental for Hubert. I take that it was someone else’s doing.”

“Yes. Someone near and dear to both of us.”

Edelgard’s hand strays to her wedding ring. “I hope they shall be alright without me. We all knew my early death was a strong possibility. I had actually seen it as inevitable since I was a child.”

“And is that was spurred you to such dramatic action? The knowledge you would die?”

“Partially. If I attempted to move slowly—build the channels of negotiation and then stay in those trenches for who knows how long—I likely would have been long dead before any real change came. I can accept a happy ending for everyone but myself, but I am not wholly unselfish. I want some peace for myself.”

“Yet in your haste, others suffered. There is always a price to be paid.”

“Yes, and the price for leaving the hornets undisturbed—as you so adequately put it—is that they continue to nest. If I spent my brief time in power moving as slow as you seem to think fit, the number of people who would have continued to suffer and die in silence would grow and grow, just as it has been growing for thousands of years. I give reparations to my death toll and acknowledge my crimes, but those of my opponents far outweigh mine.”

Sothis hums. “I will agree that inaction is just as much of a choice and action, but you can hardly equate attempts to keep peace with slaughtering armies.”

“I do not believe in a peace built on the back of inherent inequality and suffering.”

“Fair enough. I understand the flaws of the system perfectly well. I have had to watch them unravel upon themselves for an infinite amount of times now. Your great upheaval may have brought change quickly, but it also left scars of its own.”

“I know, and I have done everything I can to heal those wounds. It will be a chaotic time, and it is hard to live through the revolution and the building of utopia, but on the other side, the future,” and Edelgard finds herself smiling in her reverie, “is bright and shining and full of hope.”

Sothis doesn’t seem nearly as taken in. “The future is worth the misery of the present?”

“Yes. When the misery of the present is unbearable, anything is preferable.”

“The present was unbearable? Even before your war?”

“I don’t know how anyone could think otherwise. The peace was a farce. When I was a student, there was a calamity every month—and those were the calamities that were deemed necessary to report to Rhea. Everything was collapsing in on itself, and all it took was a conversation with almost any student at the academy to get a personal anecdote about how the current order had ruined them.”

“Then your war was magnanimous in nature? And, tell me, what do you think gave you the right to decide this path for everyone around you?”

Edelgard answers the accusation with another smile. “The fact that I was the only one willing to act. Be cruel or be kind, but the worst thing you can be is indecisive. Those like Claude who mocked the system but did nothing but grouse were almost as bad as the supporters.” 

Sothis tilts her head. “How so?”

“The complaints—the shows of irritation—provide an outlet for frustration. They don’t channel the real grievances into action, and the system continues. Only direct action such as mine is worth anything.”

“My,” Sothis says, leaning back in her chair. “How arrogant.”

“You can believe that, but you confirmed yourself nothing was going to be done if it was not for me upsetting the current order. And I hardly need to even ask you such a thing to know that is true. The emperors, kings, dukes, and everyone else with power who came before me since Seiros walked the land lived under the same system and did nothing when faced with its injustices.”

Sothis waves a hand. “I have no problem with your indictment of them. I simply think it’s arrogant to insist you were the only one fit to rule to the point of invading anyone who did not toe the line.”

“In a war such as mine,” Edelgard says. “Unification is everything. If we wanted true change, we could not waste time bickering amongst ourselves.”

“And if that bickering and compromise led to a more perfect future then the one you imposed?”

Edelgard shakes her head. “You remind me of Ferdinand—one of my advisors. He insists on talking through every issue at length before coming to a decision. Sometimes it does lead us to better outcomes, and others it would waste time when my first impulse was correct.”

“Well, personally,” Sothis says. “I think the manner of a continental war deserves some discussion.”

“Discussion with whom exactly? At the time, conversation with anyone risked my plan’s exposure and death before I could even raise my axe.”

“Do you not think it risked those things for a reason? That others were not horrified for a reason?”

“No, I understand perfectly why they had their reasons,” Edelgard says. “But the future outweighed everything. Again, the present was unbearable, and I was resolute not to listen to anyone who would tell me to wait.”

Sothis pauses, taking the moment to drink from her cup. “Did you know that in many timelines, you end up alone? The horror of your manipulations is too great and you break the trust others had in you completely?”

Edelgard’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “That is to be expected. In fact, I am in shock that my path does not turn out that way every time. Hubert always warned me not to reach out my hand when it would inevitably be smacked away or met with the tip of a sword.”

“So then you are perfectly aware—”

“Yes. I was underhanded and walking a path bathed in blood.”

Sothis’s brow raises, but she gestures for Edelgard to continue on.

“And I knew,” Edelgard says, “that I was likely to be isolated. Even if people understand the bigger picture, seeing horror right in front of them has a far stronger effect than any logic. And in a war like mine, one cannot simply change sides whenever they please. The decisions we made when we were children—who to fight and die for—would last until the war’s close.”

“This isolation—you decided it was an acceptable price?”

“Yes, again I can accept a happy ending for everyone but myself. In truth,” Edelgard feels her hands begin to quiver and she clutches her teacup righter, “the moment Byleth turned and walked to my side… I don’t think I have ever been more surprised in my life. I stretched my hand out to her and prayed my words would at least make her hesitate when the time came, and,” she shrugs but her lips always affix themselves into a smile whenever she recalls the moment, “the rest is history. I asked everyone to make a leap with me, and the fact that they did it… I hold that close to my heart.”

Sothis hums. “I see. Perhaps that would be a better avenue of conversation given your steadfastness on this topic. Tell me of love.”

Edelgard laughs. “What is there to say? I have to say, I never imagined myself dealing out such advice to you, Sothis.”

Sothis rolls her eyes. “I have resisted mocking you, and I expect you to return the favor. Tell me why you reach out your hand when you know you could be met with pain?”

Again, Edelgard looks to the shining surface of her teacup to gather her thoughts. “It’s hard to say,” she says, feeling the words slowly on her tongue. “But I think it’s because I have known love and acceptance so well before. It is addictive really. Once you have had even the smallest drop, the idea that you will never feel it again… that, too, is unbearable and worth all the pain in the world.”

“You knew love… with your family, yes?”

Edelgard nods. “I built a new family from my classmates—The Black Eagle Strike Force.” She laughs. “I spent all night thinking up that name. Byleth only confessed to me years later that she thought it was dreadful, but she could see I was so proud of it that she didn’t want to rain on my parade.”

“It sounds like a delightful memory.”

“It is, and ones like it make every chance of rejection that comes before worth it.”

Sothis pauses, this time not fiddling with her tea or snacks. “I must say that you… even when you turn your heart to ice, you are the one who always reaches out to my ward with love. I’ve seen you turn yourself into the most grotesque of monsters, and still you care for her.”

“I am glad to hear that. No matter who I am, even if I have forsaken the possibility of love or acceptance, I know my heart will always yearn for it.”

“You truly are a creature of contradictions. So ready to throw the world to chaos but also you speak like a schoolgirl about matters of the heart.”

“In a way, I spent most of my years after the war relearning my heart. To do what I did, I had to close myself down. To survive my childhood, I had to close off parts of myself. To deal with the push and pull and the guilt always tugging at the corners of my mind… I had to abandon the parts of myself that felt fear or could shed tears.” Edelgard smiles. “Byleth and I relearned together. Her heart was stolen from her when she was an infant and we stumbled but we propped each other up, too.”

“Yes, she—”

“It was Rhea’s doing. Byleth read through her father’s journal, and whatever affliction ailed her faded once Rhea was dead. It was the only conclusion we could come to.” Her grip tightens. “That is yet another thing I think I can never forgive Rhea for—she sealed the heart of someone so dear to me with the hope her magic would kill them entirely.”

Sothis’s gaze turns to the table. “Yes, she did. She hoped I would be revived, and then was shocked that I gifted Byleth my power instead of overtaking her entirely.”

“It’s a nasty business—playing with blood and hearts.”

“Byleth was stillborn. It wasn’t as if—”

“Then it would have been kinder to let her die in peace. No one should go through that torture, no matter the reason.”

Sothis raises an eyebrow. “So the end is not worth the means then, oh you who dreams only for the future?”

“If the future is one of torture and robbery of autonomy, then it is no future. It is just the past regurgitating itself. And,” Edelgard’s eyes narrow, “I understand that you are trying to paint me as a hypocrite, but you will have no luck here. Perpetuating the past, thinking ‘it will work this time,’ is not the same as breaking new ground and forging new systems.”

“And yet our future is always determined by out past. We repeat ourselves for a reason.”

“No.”

“No?”

Edelgard takes one long moment to decide before pulling up her sleeve to her elbow. The scars on the rest of her body are more ragged, but the ones on her arm get her point across well enough. 

“The pain and injustice of the past is carved into my body. Everyday when I awake, I see it. I knew since I was a child that if I ever found somebody to love me, they would see it. No one gets to tell me I will forget or repeat the past.”

Sothis narrows her eyes. “I know what was done to you, child. And that is what baffles me all the more. The monsters who maimed you were your allies.”

“They were the symptom of a disease.” Her eyes trace the pattern of thin scars. There are hundreds of them, overlapping one another like the lines of a spider web. “They lingered in the shadows and were only able to do real damage because the Church of Seiros allowed channels for absolute power. They could kill and replace nobles, church officials, whoever they desired, and then wreck their havoc. Experiments such as mine were even applauded—I was now doubly blessed by the goddess.”

“And yet you gave them power to achieve your ends. Do you remember Remire Village? A small town that meant a brutal end because you gave that group resources.”

Edelgard pulls up her sleeve. “And I carry that with me. During the time we worked together, we tracked them and their every deed. They kept us in the dark, but we outfoxed them. Hubert—”

“Yes,” Sothis says, lips quirking into a frown as she stirs her tea. “I have seen the notes he prepared following your defeat in many timelines.”

“Then you know fully well we always meant to turn on them next,” Edelgard says. “My true dream was a world ruled by humans for humans. Beings such as those who slither and Rhea and her ilk are undying. They can not break the cycle or lead people to a better future because they are the cycle. The past held Fodlan in gridlock because its immortal, shadow dictator was of the past.”

Sothis sighs. “Your truly do not understand my daughter, do you? She is not this evil beast you seem to insist she always was. She went through great pain. Like you, she saw her siblings, all of her people, brutalized and butchered before her. She wanted to create a world where such a thing would not befall her again.”

“And in doing so, she created a world where thousands must suffer to support her.”

“Your war made—”

“My war had an end. The Immaculate One has no end and she has no sympathy or care for those she rules over.”

Sothis rises to her feet. “That is not true. She was not a perfect leader, but she kept the peace for centuries. And most people—most regular people who you, arrogant girl of the future, never consulted—prefer peace and stability to all else. They cannot cling to these lofty ideals when all they desire is bread on their plates.”

Edelgard regards her coolly. “In Fodlan,” she says, “if commoners wished to improve their lot, they would have to petition nobles to give them recommendations. Commoners could only petition if they had copious amounts of money. They could only get copious amounts of money if they already had the status and opportunity a noble could grant them. Do not lecture me on what people truly want when most people were deprived of any choice for their future at the moment of birth.”

Edelgard takes another sip from her cup as Sothis’s scowl deepens. “Do not lecture me that Rhea cared for the people when she allowed such a blatantly unjust system under her rule. She covered up noble crimes and allowed children with Crests to effectively be bought and sold. My change had its costs, but the peace you hold up on a pedestal had just as many.”

Sothis stares at her for another moment before waving a hand. The table and Edelgard along with it vanish. Sothis takes a breath and turns. 

A different Edelgard is at this tea set. She’s somehow even smaller and paler. It was true that most Edelgards would not speak to her, but it was not true that every one rejected her.

Sothis takes her seat. “It is alright. Take your time. It is hard to have any life breathed back into you, especially for a person who forfeited their humanity before death.”

Edelgard nods. “I…” she stares at her hands, and Sothis knows that she is still surprised not to see claws. “I was a monster…”

“Yes, you were,” Sothis says. “It was quite the sight to see. You were very tall, very grand.”

Edelgard swallows. “I am dead now.”

“You threw a dagger at a man offering you forgiveness and he stabbed you.”

“I remember,” she says, her words still coming slow. “It was my only choice.”

“I hardly think that is true.”

She shakes her head, and she finally seems to shake off the daze hanging over her. “There was no more life for me. All my dreams turned to ashes. The friends who followed me were dead, my family was dead, the future was dead. There was nothing left for me.”

“In that timeline, King Dimitri went on to build a fine Fodlan full of prosperity.”

Edelgard bites her lip. “It was all meaningless.”

Sothis frowns. “I understand your head is still foggy, child, but I just said a future was crafted, one even you would be proud of.”

“No, it…” she closes her eyes. “My family died and I vowed I would avenge them. I would avenge them so completely that the fate that befell them would be unimaginable. That was all I had, without it…”

Sothis tilts her head. “I assure you that outcome happened, even if you were not at the head of it.”

“I died without having reached it. I failed. It was all for nothing.” Her face crumples, and Sothis knows she is seconds from breaking down into tears. “It—my vow was the only thing that kept me from throwing myself from a palace window. It had to mean something. I needed it to mean something…”

Edelgard buries her face in her hands, and Sothis waves her hand again once it is clear that this Edelgard can say no more. 

She is replaced by a child—an Edelgard with light brown hair who blinks up at her. Then, with a child’s fearlessness, she holds her hand out across the table. “Hello. I’m Princess El. What’s your name?”

Sothis shakes her hand. “Sothis. Do you recall what happened before you came here?”

Princess El bites the inside of her cheek. “I think so. These people came. They had weird faces. I think they might have been sick. My sister told me it would all be okay as long as we stayed together and stuff, and our dad would come save us. But, um,” she furrows her brow. “They said they should start with me because I have a Crest and then…”

“I’m afraid you died,” Sothis says. She reaches out across the table to pat Princess El’s hand like she would her own daughter when she cried in the middle of the night.

“Oh. My daddy didn’t come? What happened to my sister?”

Princess El’s timeline ended in a massacre. No children made it up from the surface and the official word was that the Hresvelg children never existed. 

Sothis says, “They escaped. After what happened to you, they all vowed to band together and get out. They overpowered the sick men and brought your body back to the surface. I know it’s little comfort, but your funeral was beautiful. They knew you wouldn’t be happy with plain white flowers, so they brought the prettiest, brightest ones from all over Fodlan.”

Princess El nods, taking all of her words very seriously. “I didn’t make it, but… they all worked together and were happy and made the world a better place, right?”

“Yes, they did.”

“That’s good,” she says. “I know that when I’m emperor, or, um, when I would maybe be emperor, I would make the world a better place.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“Some of my siblings,” Princess El says, her words coming faster in her excitement. “Some of them were really sad they didn’t have Crests, so when I become emperor, I’d make it so everyone has a Crest! Or maybe I’d give my Crest to one of them. Oh, but my best friend, Hubert, he doesn’t have a Crest either and he told me he didn’t want one, so maybe I’d just make it so Crests don’t matter, you know? What do you think, uh, Sothis?”

Sothis smiles. “That sounds like a nice future.”

In the world where Princess El comes from, there was no war. Rhea’s rule continued and Fodlan fumbled forward in its current state, indefinitely. 

“You know,” Sothis says. “I have a daughter about your age. Would you like to meet her?”

Princess El nods furiously, her pigtails bouncing. “Does she like making flower crowns? I get Hubert to make them with me sometimes, but he gets sunburns real easy, so he always makes us go inside before I can make a good one.”

“I think she’d like that. Is it alright if a few other children join in as well?”

“Yeah! The more the merrier. My daddy told me that’s why I have so many siblings.”

Sothis learned from her time watching over her own children and then again from guiding Byleth that children were simple creatures. Princess El doesn’t even blink when Sothis whisks them away to a field of flowers. She pulled a Prince Dimitri who died alongside his father and a Claude who didn’t learn his poisons fast enough. 

None of them seem to question any of that as they run through the field. Beside her, Seiros tugs on her sleeve. “Mother?”

“Do you see those children? What do you think of them?”

Seiros huddles closer, hiding behind her legs. “They’re human children, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are. I can’t say they won’t hurt you or pull your ears, but those are the risks we take when interacting with humans.”

“I’d rather just stay with you…”

“I know, dear. But we cannot just stand here together forever. You must move past me at some point.”

“No, I won’t.”

“That’s what the future is.”

“Then I don’t want the future. I just want you.”

Sothis reaches down and strokes her hair as Seiros nuzzles closer against her. “I know, dear.”

“I don’t want anything to change,” Seiros says. “I just want to stay with you forever.”

“You can be happy with change.”

Seiros shakes her head. “No. I’m happy now. Why would I change that?”

Sothis sighs as she lowers herself to sit in the field. Seiros clambers into her lap. “I don’t know, dear. Maybe you don’t need change, but sometimes others do. It’s hard to know what to do then.” 

Seiros seems to think on it. “I think I’d just ask you what to do.”

Sothis smiles down at her. “I don’t know everything.”

“Yes, you do.”

Sothis knows there is no arguing. She urges Seiros once more to try and play with the human children, but she refuses and stays cocooned in Sothis’s arms. 

Sothis holds her close and watches the would be rulers of Fodlan pick flowers, push each other to the dirt, and jump back up again. Seiros doesn’t even glance at them.

Dimitri needed a parent to hold him and tell him he could move on. Claude needed a confidant to break through his veil of distrust and let think beyond what was right in front of him. And Edelgard needed a lover who could embrace her despite the scars from her past and keep her heart grounded instead of whisking away to the future.

Seiros says her mother is all she needs, and Sothis gently sings to her.

Her daughter is not fit to rule. For all she dislikes them, Sothis knows each of the three children of man who reached out their hands to power would make better rulers than her daughter. 

Sothis cuddles Seiros close. She knows they would make better rulers than her, and she laments that besides loaning a token of her power, she could not reach out and guide them along their way. She laments that they did not need her to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that ends my writing for the year! Happy New Years, everyone!


End file.
